Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes five days weekly with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

This month, stalwart grader the
Louisiana Association of Business and Industry put out its annual
scorecard, while Americans for Prosperity launched its initial version. Both hew to conservative
issue preferences, with the former representing business interests and the
latter ideological conservatives.

LABI provides a listing for every
legislator and grades them on a long list of votes, some procedural, some
final, with some counting for as little as less than one percent of the
cumulative score and the most about ten percent (weighings varied between
chambers). By contrast to this completeness, AFP does not attempt an aggregate
listing nor a grade; it simply shows how legislators who represent a postal
address voted on eight measures, most of these also appearing on LABI’s.

It seems that in Leesville recently
a restaurant owner informed a woman that she could not stay on the premises if
she chose to breastfeed her baby uncovered – this in spite of R.S. 51:2247.1 that
allows a woman to do so “in any place of public accommodation, resort, or
amusement.” The female owner said if the mother did so she had to use a cover,
but many women find them cumbersome and larger babies may have difficulty with
them, and this case the mother refused. However, the law does not give owners
the ability to require that, and while the mother graciously does not plan
legal action against the establishment, the owner, citing decorum, put out a
sign demanding that breastfeeding patrons cover up and plans to build an
enclosed area in the dining room as a station for these mothers.

Besides the logistical problem in
the rare instance that multiple women wish to breastfeed at the same time –
which will be induced artificially as compatriots of the affected mother plan a
kind of “nurse in” at the restaurant in the near future – even having a
separate and enclosed area for this purpose does not affect a woman’s legal right
to breastfeed uncovered in public in Louisiana. In fact, it explicitly exempts
women from R.S. 14:106
that defines obscenity as showing the female nipple.

14.7.15

Drowned out by all of the cheering
concerning a standstill higher education budget in Louisiana passed last month
was these dollars continue to flow in a way that props up an inefficient
delivery system, perpetuating waste of taxpayer dollars in a tight budgetary
environment that by law is becoming harder to justify.

The issue came to the
surface
at the latest Board of Regents meeting, where community colleges complained
that state money continues disproportionately to go to baccalaureate-and-above
schools, and to certain ones of those. The Board has a funding formula that
details how much of this money should go to institutions, based largely on
enrollment but also in recent years’ performance. But it also has a provision
called “stop-loss” that attenuates the impact of the formula the lower the
state subsidy goes, which means fewer dollars are subtracted than the formula
would indicate the lower enrollment goes for an institution.

This has been to the disadvantage
of community colleges because their enrollments have been growing. In essence,
because as a result the portion of money they receive through tuition and fees
continues to rise, this is used to supplant part of what they would get from
the state, which then is transferred to weaker four-year institutions that have
been losing students (ironically, those institutions have kvetched about
proceeds from tuition hikes substituting for reductions in taxpayer
subsidization). Generally speaking, with a shift to stronger entrance
requirements at senior institutions and continuing increases in tuition that
may price out some baccalaureate-and-above students and intended students, the
proportion of students attending junior institutions in Louisiana has been on the
climb over the past several years.

13.7.15

The conclusions drawn from a recent
study
of the Housing Voucher Choice program in Orleans Parish demonstrate that if you
don’t understand why the world works as it does, not only can you not craft
good policy, but also liberty becomes threatened.

The New Orleans Data Center published
a report about the federal benefit more commonly known as “Section 8”
housing. The program calculates a standard
payment value representing what a local housing authority would define as a
“moderately” priced home and offers eligible clients a chit worth that rate
minus 30 percent of the family’s monthly adjusted income or gross rent minus
monthly adjusted income. Landlords whose dwellings meet health and safety
standards may rent to voucher holders, who can supplement the payment standards
with any amount of their own money up to 40 percent of monthly adjusted income.
As a result, landlords get a guaranteed income stream (for a minimum of a year
at first) with a security deposit, and low-income renters get a break on
housing with the money they save potentially going to better their positions in
life. In New Orleans, the Housing Authority of New Orleans, for example, set
the fiscal
year 2015 standard payment for a two-bedroom home at $1,028.

The study in question looked at
whether the vast expansion in Orleans Parish of voucher supply and usage after
the hurricane disasters of 2005, when the public housing stock shrank over 90
percent, had the effect of diluting concentrations of poverty and, as race is
associated with poverty, of racial segregation in housing patterns. It
concluded that both had happened, but so moderately that program implementation
had only had a marginal impact.

12.7.15

Understand that the retreat
of special interests wishing to siphon more tax dollars from citizens to
make movies is not because of their generous and cooperative nature, but because
the correlation of political forces continues to swing even more decisively
against them.

After making a big show of
threatened lawsuits against the state for changes to its Motion Picture Investors
tax credit, last week the group representing filmmakers and ancillary entities
announced they had dropped that strategy. The changes put a cap on how much in
credits would be redeemable each year for the next three, and included other tightening
of criteria to receive them that would diminish their availability and
generally favor in-state efforts. The group asserted that suing essentially would
make the film environment in state look unfavorable, which it wished not to
encourage.

Yeah, right. It’s not the legal
climate that has changed; as previously
explained, the shills had a weak case from the start challenging the
constitutionality of the new law, a threat which properly understood constituted
a bluff. With this strategic alteration signaled, this proclamation and
explanation serve as another bluff to try to magnify the power of an
increasingly weak hand. The very fact that the group had to publicize the
demise of a nonexistent suit shows an attempt to leverage power by trying to
create the impression that it is discarding that plan in exchange for
policy-maker compliance in changing the law essentially before the cap bites,
in a way more favorable to the interests it represents. In others words, it’s
trying hard to convince the political class that it’s the one with leverage and
can call the tune.

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